When audiences attack!

Bouncing around YouTube I came across this. What that is is an effort to burst into the scene riding an e-wave of popularity. A band makes a song which they want to have included in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim versus The World movie. They uploaded the video with the song to YouTube in march at which point the movie was pretty much done by then, so they haven't got a prayer. I'm not going to say much about the song. Its about Scott Pilgrim. I don't care about Scott Pilgrim. The song isn't good enough to make me care about it despite being about Scott Pilgrim. So, onward.

There's two sides to entertainment: producers and audience. The people who make the things that are for our entertainment create content (music, movies, television, video games, etc.) for money or art or whatever and throw it to the masses. The masses being of course, the audience. So the audience will either ignore it, not like it, or like it. In the cases of the first two, the people making the content usually go back to the drawing board. Or they quit and go home crying. Or they keep doing what they are doing thinking that they are right and everyone else in the world is stupid and will eventually realize the brilliance of the work. Hello Joplin. But if its the latter then the work continues, word spreads and its a success. Success can be in the form of money, fame, or even just mass approval.

So, something comes out, like say a comic about a guy with no super powers in a world where everyone has a super power (;D), and this thing begins to build an audience because it manages not to suck. People tell their friends. They'll mention it online. Sales continue. Popularity grows. And it hits a certain level where it masses out in coolness. It trumps COUNTDOWN but doesn't quite hit that coolness rating of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER. No problem. Said project is followed up, and maybe it does as well. Maybe it does better. Maybe it tanks.

But what happens when word spreads that there will be a follow up? What happens when fans of the first story get up the gumption to start one of those internet petitions? What if thousand of people on Twitter demand that some character is killed off? What happens if a Facebook group with thousands of people demands that the character gets brought back from the dead? What if some nut blogger writes that the character that died and came back should TOTALLY hook up with this other character to help her deal with her cheese fixation? WHAT IF THAT BLOG GETS FEATURED ON YAHOO AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE COMMENT DEMANDING A THREESOME WITH THE NOW NOT DEAD PERSON, THE GIRL, AND A WEDGE OF CHEESE?!

You see the problem?

Its totally the cheese.

And this phenomenon is popping up more and more. Black Spidey anyone? And we've seen what happens when an audience starts grabbing for creative control of a movie. You get SNAKES ON A PLANE.

But audiences should be listened to. Feedback is important. Otherwise you'll just be doing your thing and beating your head against the wall wondering why you're not selling. Criticism is a good thing, and people not caring about your work is indeed a form of criticism. However, an audience caring a little too much and trying to change your work is going a bit too far. That's why there's things like fan-fiction. You can't have too many chefs in one kitchen. If you're the one making the content, you are the head chef. And if people aren't coming to your restaurant, you call Gordon Ramsey. You call that person you'll look at what you are doing and knows enough about thing to get you on the right path. But you can't go and do everything every last customer thinks of.

That'll leave you with no business.

And that'll leave the audience with a big ol' wedge of cheese.

The audience of one

I think everyone one creates and makes their work public asks themselves at some point, "Is anyone even seeing this?" This point comes early in careers of creators, before the numbers come in as to how much you've sold, or how many hits there are on your website or you start seeing your name mentioned here and there. This can be scary for some people. Some people feel the need for validation of their efforts. Validation is nice and comforting. No one wants to feel like they've been wasting their time and effort. However, they're missing out on something.

There's an old expression: "Dance like nobody is watching you." They never intended that saying to apply only to dancing. There's a liberating feeling to being your own audience and not caring about your sales or hit count. You start getting experimental. You start throwing new ideas and techniques around to see what works and what doesn't.

For me, it was college. NIGHT LIFE got it's humble beginnings in the James Madison University newspaper. I learned a lot there. I learned about meeting my deadlines. I learned about pacing my story. I learned how to deal with different editors. And I learned how to dance like no one was watching.

For those who aren't familiar with good ol JMU at the time there were about 10,000 students. The JMU newspaper, The Breeze, was put out on Mondays and Thursdays and was free. I didn't find out until later that the paper was also available throughout the city of Harrisonburg were JMU was nestled in. So, my work was readily available to thousands of people, and I maintained that only 12 of them actually read the damned thing.

I had to. I have one very prominent weakness: I am completely unable to comprehend that I have fans somewhere. I once had a professor ask me to stay after class for a moment if I had the time. I figured I was in deep shit because I was struggling with the class. No, he wanted to chat about the comic. When I should have felt pride, I kind of felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me. I learned to deal with it, especially after people who came to me as fans became friends. They started to get more vocal. Professors were thinking it was cool that I was in their classes. Other students would talk to me about certain characters.

The 12 fan theory got utterly destroyed at a party when I discovered that nearly everyone there was a fan. Thank God it was senior year. I may have developed an ego or something.

Fast forward to now. I'm putting out more content than ever before. However, I'm back to my old 12 fan theory. 12 is a good number. It's small enough that I don't feel overwhelmed, but it's large enough to motivate me. I'd hate to let down my fans, all 12 of you. I've got two followers of this blog so for all I know Pinds and Kristie (bless the pair of ya!) are the only people who will ever read this.

And I'm cool with that.

I'm going to keep on dancing.